The Seven Stages of Awareness

Did we find gratitude in everything we were complaining about last week?

It was not an easy challenge!

However, this month’s theme will help shed some light on how we can learn to see our complaints and our stresses as opportunities to learn more about ourselves and grow as human beings. It will also help us to shift from the disempowering blame mindset that keeps many of us stuck in the complaint or problem and shift us into the empowering mindset of taking responsibility for what we are feeling and needing.

This month’s theme is all about awareness

This week is all about awareness of our feelings, our emotions, our needs and our tendencies to react when our needs are not being met.

The awareness of our tendency to react and/or respond in any situation and in every relationship we have, will lead us to opportunities to learn about ourselves.

This week we open our awareness to going inward and making the empowering decision to take responsibility for what we are feeling, how we are acting and ultimately what needs of ours are not being met.

This starts with a daily intention to consciously be aware of what we are feeling physically and emotionally in our body. To be consciously aware of our needs and in particular the needs we have that are NOT being met. 

Start now by bringing awareness to how you communicate when your needs ARE being met AND how you communicate when your needs are NOT being met.

When our needs are being met, we feel physically comfortable inside and the emotions we are likely to feel are happiness, contentment, joy, love, gratitude, peace, self-control and calm. How do you communicate that outward?

When our needs are NOT being met, we feel physically uncomfortable inside and we are likely to feel emotions of anger, frustration, confusion, resentment, disappointment, sadness and even anxiety. How do you communicate that outward?

 All our emotions are derived from our needs – being met or unmet

We either feel comfortable or uncomfortable in our body and that generates an emotion

How we react to and communicate these uncomfortable feelings is different for everyone and will be different depending on the situation, however the opportunity to learn something about ourselves in the AWARENESS of our reaction to these unmet needs is important to shed the light onto how we can learn from these complaints and essentially these unmet needs that keep showing up for us.

Until we learn from them – they will continue to show up

“Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know” ~Pema Chodron

 Our complaints can be our greatest teachers – if we choose to see them that way

If we are waiting for the outside world and the people in it to fall into perfect alignment with our needs – then we are setting ourselves up for a lot of physical discomforts in the body and emotional upsets in our future.

Emotional intelligence is when we have a greater understanding of ourselves and can consciously choose to respond to unmet needs as opposed to reacting to them. Once this is accomplished – choosing conscious communication is then the next step.

What is Conscious Communication?

Conscious communication is when we can ask for what we need from a space of understanding our own feelings, emotions and needs. It is also when we are willing to listen to others feelings and needs. 

This is a transformation from fear to love

Transformation begins with awareness

In Ayurveda our emotional intelligence and emotional wellness is just as important to our well-being as what we feed our body and how we move our body. Through the Chopra Education program Deepak outlines 7 biological responses that we as humans move through when we are met with the fear of our unmet needs.

To begin this transformation from fear to love we need to understand our 7 biological responses which I like to refer to as the 7 Awareness Steps;

1.  Fight/flight/freeze response; this is bringing awareness to how our body physically reacts to a complaint or stress. Our body naturally responds to stress by physically preparing the body to either fight, run away or freeze – even when there is no immediate threat. We may feel this in the body as our heart rate increasing, tightness in the chest, feeling nauseous, sweating, and/or clenching our jaw (to name just a few). A good awareness on a day to day basis is understanding the reaction we feel when a need of ours is not being met – what are we feeling physically in our body AND when we feel it what emotions come up for us AND what do we tend to do? Blame someone? Blame ourselves? Avoid the situation? When we choose either one of these disempowering options we stay in fight/flight/freeze response and our body suffers physically. We cannot learn anything about ourselves because we are in the ego space of blame/victim mode.
2. Reactive response; this is bringing awareness to our behaviors when our needs are not getting met. Do we attempt to control, manipulate or coerce someone or something to get our own way?
   Do we accuse, blame, shame or use our anger or our sadness or even the silent treatment to get our way? This is reacting in a way that will keep us in the loop of fight/flight/freeze. This is of course ego/blame/victim mode and even though there may be a temporary “victory” the same situations will keep happening. They may wear different pants or a skirt this time or maybe it is a situation that just keeps showing up. It will continue to show up until we make this awareness connection that it has everything to do with US and not anyone in the outer world. People and situations trigger us yes, but they are not the root cause of the trigger. Our emotions and triggers are the vehicles for transformation and when we finally see that – we are ready to take responsibility and step into the empowering mindset of shifting from these fear based ego reaction loops into the heart and Soul of who we are. From this space we choose consciously to shift from blame and reacting into responsibility and growth by taking steps to become emotionally intelligent and this happens when we respond to our unmet needs and stresses in our life with restful awareness.
3.  Restful Awareness; this is the gateway into a more expanded level of emotional intelligence and responsiveness.     Restful awareness is gained by a regular practice of meditation. A regular practice of stillness and silence. Walking in nature with silence and restful awareness of all that is around us is another practice that will lead us towards this way of  being. The point of this practice is to calm the nervous system so we can experience deeper peace that we then carry with us throughout our day. This allows us to observe our feelings, our emotions and our needs, without reacting or judging them. It will  essentially lead us to a better way of communicating our needs to others AND be able to understand others needs as well.

The idea is to practice restful awareness and cultivate it into our lives on a daily basis. IMPORTANT NOTE:  not every day and every situation will be met with a “restful awareness response”! We are likely to react in ways that bring out the worst in us! When this happens – find compassion for yourself, gratitude for the experience AND then you are ready to find/see the lesson! Notice how you feel… What did you learn about your feelings, emotions and needs? If you learned something – anything! Then it is all a part of this human experience and growth!

When we find ourselves living more from the restful awareness response and less from the reactive responses, 4 higher responses begin to unfold in our experiences…

4. Intuitive response; this is when we turn our awareness inward and find the insights and understandings of our  heart and from our Soul. Many solutions to problems and our unmet needs unfold when we stop looking outward for the fix and start depending on our own inner guidance.
5. Creative response; this is when we are no longer stuck in past conditioned fears and old reactions and we begin to open up to a whole new way of looking at ourselves, other people and the world around us. There is less judgement and more acceptance in this response. Wayne Dyer’s quote “Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change” explains this response beautifully.
6. Visionary response; this response is when we can open up to possibilities and potential beyond our own imagination. This is not only being able to see and envision best case scenarios but to also imagine what a best case scenario would feel like. When we are grateful for the feeling, our hearts open and scenarios beyond even our own imagination begin to unfold. “Magical thinking makes you crazy – and renders everything possible” ~ Zadie Smith
7. Sacred response; this response comes completely from the Soul space. There is no ego here – we are beyond the ego and beyond fear in this space. This is where trust in the process of all that is unfolding in your life happens. We trust in the unknown. We trust in the Universe. We trust that everything is in divine and perfect order. We are happy for no reason. We accept all of life.

These responses are biological in all of us, however this isn’t about getting to sacred response 7 and staying there. We are all Souls and with our awareness turned on and inward each higher response is achievable and accessible but we are also all having a human experience – so going up and down the levels of these responses is human. One day you may find yourself blissfully attracting all your desires in visionary response and the next day find yourself reacting to an old trigger, hurt or wound from the past. This is the beautiful, messy, confusing, adventurous, frustrating and amazing life we all get to live.

Embrace it

This week’s intention

1. “Today, I am more aware of my feelings, emotions and needs”
2. “Today I am consciously aware of my tendency to react.”
3. “Today, I am more aware of my triggers, complaints and the desire to control or manipulate someone or something to get my needs met”
4. “Today, I start (or continue) my journey towards restful awareness and the higher responses by cultivating a meditation practice of stillness and silence”
5. “Today I intend to be more observant and less reactive throughout my day”

Next week is Thanksgiving so no Tap In or blog post – take these next 2 weeks to draw these awareness’s into your life. Transformation begins and emotional intelligence & wellness unfolds.

Enjoy the process!

Let’s tap this in…